Identity Efficiency for High-Performance Ambient Pressure Ion Mobility Spectrometry

A new approach to reduce the false-positive responses commonly encountered in the field when drugs and explosives are detected is reported for an electrospray ionization high-performance ion mobility spectrometry (ESI-HPIMS). In this article, we report on the combination of reduced mobility and the width-at-half-height of a peak to give a new parameter called conditional reduced mobility (CRM). It was found that the CRM was capable of differentiating between real drugs peaks from that of a false-positive peak and may help to reduce false-positive rates. This effect was demonstrated using 11 drugs (amphetamine, cannabidiol, cocaine, codeine, heroine, methamphetamine, morphine, phentermine, L-phenylepherine, proglitazone, and rosiglitazone) and seven interferences chosen from off-the-shelf products. This report determined and compared CRM, resolving power (R(m)), and diffusion-limited conditional theoretical reduced mobility (DLCTRM) for ESI-HPIMS. The most important parameters for determining CRM are reduced mobility and width-at-half-height of a peak. There is a specific optimum voltage, gate pulse width, resolving power, and now CRM for each ion. DLCTRM indicate the optimum reduced mobility that is not normally possible under field conditions. CRM predicts the condition at which a target compound can be differentiated from a false-positive response. This was possible because different ions exhibits different drifting patterns and hence a different peak broadening phenomenon inside an ion mobility tube. Reduced mobility for target compounds reported were reproducible to within 2% for ESI-HPIMS. The estimated resolving power for the ESI-HPIMS used in this study was 61 ± 0.22. Conditional reduced mobility introduced in this paper show differences between target compounds and false-positive peaks as high as 74%, as was the case for cannabidiol and interference #1 at 70 μs gate pulse width.